Denied AFROTC. Struggling to accept. Advice?

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AFhopeful1197

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Feb 12, 2018
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Hello,
I am looking for support.

My DS was denied a waiver through AFROTC after receiving a scholarship for engineering. He is devastated over this. I have talked with DODMERB Consultants, and it is pretty clear that he will never receive a waiver from any branch of the military. He had an MRI that showed some breakdown of cartilage last year. He is a varsity runner and has no symptoms in the past year. We got repeat MRIs to try to prove he was healed, but they remain the same. (ortho says this is what any varsity runner of 4 years would look like and has no restrictions). So this is very hard for DS to understand. I can see that the AF sees it as a pre-existing condition. I work in the medical field. But with this abrupt end to a dream, we are struggling here.

One question- should we continue to encourage him to accept the scholarship online? He earned it, regardless of some old knee thing that he had, and he should be proud to accept it. But will it ever lead to anything?

Any words of wisdom from others who have been in this situation would be helpful. Are there any other paths in life to mimic an air force career? He will study mechanical engineering, or aerospace engineering or physics. He is not yet sure.

Thanks
 
Without a waiver it won't lead anywhere. Nevertheless I would accept the scholarship in case there is some change in the diagnosis and waiver situation if you are pursuing that.
 
AFhopeful1197 said:
That all depends on what he wanted to do in the Air Force

Pilot, combat rescue...
Click to expand...
Unfortunately those are hard to parallel in the civilian world.

How interested was he in becoming a pilot? Was it something he was dead set on doing or was it just something he saw videos of one day and said "that looks cool"? Does he have any aviation experience. The reason I ask is because he might have a couple of options. For one, he could look into just becoming a civilian pilot. Hopefully the FAA would grant him a first class medical and he would eventually be able to fly for the airlines if he so desired. However I would understand that if he was always dead seat on only ever flying for the military, that this would not necessarily be appealing to him. If he has any interest in flying helos, his other option would possibly be to look into the US Army's WOFT program. They don't use the DoDMERB system to screen candidates for this program (they use MEPS instead), so there's a slight chance that he could get lucky if the doctors doing the screening for this program determined that his condition was not as serious as DoDMERB did. However I wouldn't pin solid hopes on this. The only other option I can think of would be to write to his senator, congressman, etc. and ask for help.

As for the combat rescue thing - no I can't really think of anything close to that in the civilian world (maybe professional law enforcement, SWAT, etc?). But honestly in my opinion, he would not be missing much as a CRO. They train all the time and do deploy but as a CRO you are essentially just a glorified paramedic. Personally I've always held the belief that if you're going to do the special forces thing, Army SF is probably the best branch for that - they do everything the Air Force guys do and then some.
 
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